


a sense of each other

by a_wonderingmind



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, MFMMwhumptober, Mentions of Paris, Panic Attacks, Whumptober 2020, because I am incapable of much else, but mostly comfort?, enjoy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:07:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26976358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_wonderingmind/pseuds/a_wonderingmind
Summary: Phryne heard it clatter, but it was like it came through a curtain separating her from the source of the noise. She was suddenly aware of her whole body vibrating, and not with arousal.A power outage brings back some unpleasant memories for Phryne.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 75
Collections: MFMMwhumptober2020





	a sense of each other

**Author's Note:**

> My second contribution to the Miss Fisher fandom! Y'all were so nice to leave so many wonderful comments on my first fic, and I felt thoroughly welcomed!
> 
> This one is a little less light-hearted, in the spirit of whumptober, so I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Unbeta'd - all mistakes are my own.

Jack closed the door behind him, dropping his jacket and the tension in his shoulders. Folding the outerwear over the chair in the corner, he reached a hand for Phryne’s, who was engrossed in a book, sprawled out over the covers of the bed.  


She looked up at him and smiled, putting the book down beside her to take his outstretched hand in greeting.  


“Hello,” she smiled.  


“Hello yourself,” he grinned back.  


His broad smile turned mischievous and his eyes glinted in mirth, which she just managed to mirror in her own sparkling expression before he pulled her out of the bed and into his arms.  


A small gasp at being flung out of bed escaped her, before she righted herself against his chest and returned a roguish smile of her own.  


“My, Inspector,” she smirked, “whatever brought this on?”  


His reply was preceded by a trail of kisses up her jaw, before he whispered in her ear “Just thinking about how much I love you,”  


“Mmmh,” she moaned. Hearing that might have scared her once, but she was finding more and more she enjoyed it being said. But what was even better…  


“Why don’t you show me?” She punctuated the end of the sentence with a roll of her hips.  


He nipped at her ear. “Certainly,”  


A hand wanders lower, pulling her hips closer, eliminating the last of the space between them, kneading. A groan as a hand slipped beneath his waistband.  


Her fingers got caught in his braces, and she tugged for a second, as if she had forgotten that the waistcoat was hindering their movement. She moved to remedy this, hands sliding up his chest, attacking buttons, as he pulled her firmer against him, his quickly hardening length beginning to poke at her belly. He sipped at her lips, before bringing a hand up behind her head to press his face more closely to hers, trying to put all the things he couldn't say into the way he moved against her; the vibrations of her moan told him he was more or less succeeding, as well as shooting straight to his groin.  


His hands wandered lower, finding their way up the milky softness of her thigh, fingers teasing through the silk of her tap pants; she had already soaked through them. He sucked in a breath when he realised this, marvelling at how wet she still got for him, and that it was him that elicited such a reaction in her at all. He pressed his finger on her clit and heard her suck in a breath. Drawing small circles around her nub his other hand reached for her hip and started on the buttons of her tap pants. He let out a small huff when they defied him, small and unwieldy as they were, especially in his broad fingers, and Phryne giggled, clearly amused by his reaction to the unwanted barrier.  


And then the lights went out.  


Phryne pulled back in surprise, but only as far back as for their foreheads to rest against the other. She grinned.  


“They say being in the dark heightens your other senses,” she whispered, reaching up to nip at his earlobe.  


“Mmm,” he growled, “better start exploring then,” One hand renewed the assault on the buttons, other hand drawing fingers up and down between her legs.  


He heard her stifle a moan, and even though he couldn't see her, he could feel she was biting her lip.  


“As much as I am enjoying these explorations,” she choked out, “my family planning is still in the drawer,”  


This registered in Jack’s brain not at all, and he continued, slipping his fingers underneath the fabric, having finally given up with the fastenings. It was only as she grabbed his wrist he stalled in his ministrations.  


“Please, Jack. I want to feel you inside me,”  


His brain finally caught up with the rest of the world and he pulled away reluctantly.  


“Which drawer?” he asked, feeling his way round by the end of the bed.  


“Top one,” she said, turning to her dresser and beginning to unhook her earrings.  


He reached said top drawer, and began to rummage around, hoping the smooth clamshell case was not far back.  


“It should be quite near the front,”  


“Got it,”  


He turned it over in his hand, before feeling his way back around the bed. He pivoted around the corner and promptly tripped, lurching forward and stubbing his toe on the bedpost on the way down.  


“Ah, fuck!” he exclaimed, arms flailing and landing hard on both feet, just catching himself, the case clattering to the floor.  


Phryne heard it clatter, but it was like it came through a curtain separating her from the source of the noise. She was suddenly aware of her whole body vibrating, and not with arousal.  


Her throat tightened, the memory of fingers there forcing itself through her consciousness. She could feel a searing in her chest, breath coming too fast and too shallow to catch properly. She was aware of a burning in her trunk but it was too vague and immense to ascribe to either the sharp pain just underneath her shoulderbone or the racing of her heart, beating a rhythm that kept up with her thoughts as they rolled past her, sensations dropping her in an apartment long unvisited, in the haze of post war disquiet.  


The smell of cigarette smoke filled her nostrils and she could almost feel his hot breath on the nape of her neck. Her own hands were trembling as she looked down at them, not quite hers, but the press of gentle hands underneath them sent bolts of fear through her, at the memory of hands less gentle, nevertheless.  


There was movement in the corner and she darted away from the shadow, landing in her bed, and pulled her knees up to her chest, pushing back into the pillows; her back rutted up against the headboard.  


A wall pressed up against her back and the shadows leaning over her; she can feel the pressure in her chest building and she clenches her fists, nails digging into palms as an anchor.  


The room is suddenly simultaneously too dark and too stimulating; every whisper of the curtains and soft footstep of the figure overwhelming.  


Looking around, she tries to anchor herself in her present surroundings. She can see the outline of a man… nope, not helping; though some part of her warring consciousness tells her it’s Jack.  


The moonlight through the curtains, the burgundy panelling of her doors, the round patterns on the walls.  


Her own hands, porcelain contrasting against the darker bedspread. New creases in the undersheet as the shadow comes closer and puts weight on the bed.  


_Five things she can see._  


She grips the doona, her focus on the yielding fabric underneath her fingers.  


“Phryne. It’s me, Jack. May I take your hand?”  


She feels her head nod.  


His hand is large and warm around hers, and she can feel his thumb stroking little circles.  


_Four things she can feel._  


The bedsheets rustle as he shifts closer, his breathing constant and steady. A thunk of feet from the room above; probably Dot, from their weight and position.  


_Three things she can hear._  


She vaguely registers the scent of his aftershave, and the freshly washed sheets.  


_Two things she can smell._  


“Phryne?”  


She looks up, glassy eyed. He draws her closer to him, arm around her back and face a breath away. When she doesn’t flinch, he presses his lips to hers.  


Toothpaste.  


_One thing she can taste._  


He pulled back to look at her, eyes a silent question. She nodded shakily in reply.

  


There came a soft knock at the door and both their heads snapped to.  


“Some candles, Miss. I thought I might bring them in case you needed them.”  


“Thank you, Mr B,” she said, Jack’s quiet presence making her appear more steady than she felt.  


When the door closed Jack turned to her. “What was it?”  


She looked down at their hands, still intertwined, and ran her fingers softly over the backs of his hands.  


“You caught me between my shoulders when you tripped up on the edge of the bed,” she said quietly. “I think that, combined with the expletive… I was back in Paris again.”  


In his face she could read all the words already said, all the words that would do no good; and a tentative apology in his slightly upturned mouth.  


“It’s alright. I’m alright.” A breath out; whose, she wasn’t quite sure. He opened his arms to her and she pressed herself into the space inbetween, leaning up to nestle into the crook of his neck.  


He pressed his index finger into the knot at her right shoulder where he had hit her, the skin still slightly red, asking, and she nodded her head. Pulling away, he turned to pepper light kisses to her shoulder blade and her head fell back to rest on his.  


She let out a long sigh, letting the last of the tension in her body go as she relaxed into the small circles he was now drawing on her shoulder, slowly adjusting her breath to their rhythm. Her own hand came to rest on his knee, curling herself even closer to him. She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent, pomade and something uniquely him; letting the calm in the room wash over her as she felt his warm embrace. Eyes fluttering open again, she noticed his trousers were still loose around his waist and tenting slightly, and she smirked, sliding back up his body and cupping him.  


“You know,” she breathed, “we never really started exploring,”  


She felt the hand on her back pull her closer. “Neither we did,”  


“Would you like to rectify that?”  


He regarded her carefully. “Are you sure, Phryne?”  


She grinned. “Of course,” she replied, pressing herself against him, smiling wider when she felt his body respond.  


_"To unpath’d waters, undreamed shores,_ then, Miss Fisher,” he grinned back, rolling them over and diving between her legs.  


She laughed, and gave herself over to the waves of not exactly new, but always welcome adventure of sensations he produced.

**Author's Note:**

> What Jack quotes to Phryne is part of a longer phrase from The Winter’s Tale, act 4, scene 4, where Camillo is advising Florizel and Perdita not to go off to some unexplored and dangerous part of the world. I feel like there’s a whole fic in there, if you really wanted.
> 
> I could also be convinced to write a gratuitously smutty follow up...


End file.
